Library. ར. ALEXANDER THE GREAT. History of Greece. By GEORGE GROTE, Esq. Vol. XII. London: 1856. MR. GROTE has fixed the end of his great work at an earlier point than we could have wished. It is indeed that which he chose at the beginning of his labours; but we had hoped that he might be led to think over the matter again, and not to lay down his pen till he had traced the history of Grecian freedom down to its final overthrow. As it is, he contents himself with tracing the decline of Athenian independence down to its lowest pitch of degradation. The historian of the great Democracy cannot bring himself to go on with his labours in times when Athens vanishes into political insignificance, and when the main interest of the drama gathers around kingly Macedonia and federal Achaia. His contempt for the 'Greece of Polybios,' we must confess, surprises us. The Greece of Polybios stands indeed very far below the Greece of Thucydides; but it is still Greece, still living Greece, Greece still free and republican. It was indeed but a recovered freedom which it enjoyed, a freedom less perfect, less enduring, than that of the elder time; but it was still, as Pausanias calls it, a new shoot from the old trunk. But Mr. Grote has turned away with something of disdain from a subject which we think is worthy of him, and which we are sure that no other man living is * Οτε δὴ καὶ μόγις, ἅτε ἐκ δένδρου λελωβημένου καὶ εὐθὺ τὰ πλείονα, ἀνεβλάστ τησεν ἐκ τῆς Ἑλλάδος τὸ ̓Αχαϊκόν, vii. 17. 2. Mr. Grote himself quotes the passage, xii. 527. M so fit to treat. Excellently as it has been dealt with by Bishop Thirlwall, there is still something to be added from Mr. Grote's own special point of view. No one could have so well compared the Achaian institutions with those of earlier and of later commonwealths. Mr. Grote is strongly antiMacedonian, but we should have expected that his very dislike of Macedonia would have led him to look with special interest on the revolution which freed so large a part of Greece from Macedonian bondage. It is indeed strange to find Mr. Grote dismissing, in two or three contemptuous lines, the revival, and the final struggles of that Hellenic liberty which is so dear to him. And strange too we think it, in so careful an observer of the affairs of Switzerland, to pay so little heed to one of the first and most successful attempts to solve the great problem of Federal Government. With regard to the Macedonian aspect of the subject, we must confess that we hold a different opinion. Mr. Grote is admirably fitted to be the historian of Achaia; he is not so well fitted to be the historian of Macedonia. Indeed, in the present volume and in the one next before it, he has given us a history of Macedonia in its most brilliant period, which we cannot but look upon as the least satisfactory part of his noble work. Mr. Grote's History is so great a work that some points fairly open to discussion could not fail to be found in it. He puts forth so much that is new and startling that he must be prepared for a certain amount of dissent even among admirers who study him in his own spirit. And we ourselves have so often set forth our admiration for his general treatment of his subject, we have borne such full and willing witness to all that Mr. Grote has done for the truth of history, that we have fairly earned the right to dispute any special point, however important. Such a special point of controversy we find in his treatment of the history of Macedonia, and especially of its greatest sovereign. From Mr. Grote's view of Alexander the Great, we respectfully but very widely dissent, and our present object is to set forth our reasons for so dissenting. Mr. Grote has many claims on the gratitude of the historical student; but it is as the historian of the Athenian Democracy that his claims are highest and most enduring. In that character he has won abiding fame. He has grappled with popular errors: he has put forth truths which, but for the weighty arguments with which he has supported them, would have been at once cast aside as paradoxes. He has justified ostracism; he has found something to say for Kleôn; he has shown that, even in the condemnation of Sôkratês, though the People erred and erred deeply, yet their error was natural and almost pardonable. Dêmos is the darling of his affections; he watches him from his cradle, and forsakes him only when he has sunk into a second childhood from which no Sausage-seller on earth could call him up again. Now it was by Macedonian hands that this cherished object was trampled down, degraded, corrupted, well nigh wiped out from the list of independent states. That Mr. Grote should be perfectly fair to Macedonia and Macedonians would have been too much to hope for. But the result is that Mr. Grote, in this part of his history, sinks far below the level of his great predecessor. Bishop Thirlwall's narrative of this period it would indeed be hard to outdo. The clear and vivid narrative, the critical appreciation of evidence, the thorough impartiality which can fully sympathize with the cause of Athens and yet yield all due honour to Alexander and even to Philip, all are here in the pages of Bishop Thirlwall, but they are not found in those of Mr. Grote. Alexander, with him, becomes a vulgar destroyer, a mere slaughterer of men. He overthrows Greece and Persia alike, and founds nothing in their stead. That Philip and Alexander put an end to the brightest glory and fullest independence of Greece, cannot be gainsaid. But it is another thing when Mr. Grote deals with them as mere barbarian invaders, as aggressors as thoroughly external as Darius and Xerxes. Whether the claims which Philip and Alexander made to a Hellenic character for themselves or their people were just or unjust, it was only under that Hellenic character that they took on them the dominion of Hellas. That their conquests brought a large portion of the world within the pale, not indeed of Greek political city-freedom, but of Greek social life and intellectual culture, can as little be gainsaid as anything that is said against them. And it is surely not unreasonable to believe that Alexander looked forward to such a result, and that he adapted means to such an end. In our view, Alexander founded a great deal. He founded the civilization of Alexandria and Constantinople. He founded the modern Greek nation. On such a point as this, Mr. Finlay, who fully appreciates the great Macedonian, is a better judge than Mr. Grote. To the one Alexander is the end of his subject; to the other he is its beginning. Yet even here, where we think that his judgement is thoroughly warped, we must bear our thankful testimony to Mr. Grote's careful and conscientious collation of every statement and every authority. In this he presents throughout a most honourable contrast to another great writer who shares his view of the subject. Niebuhr's Lectures on the age of Philip and Alexander are throughout conceived in the spirit of the too famous oration of Kallisthenês.* Everything Macedonian is brought in only to be reviled. Every recorded scandal against Alexander is eagerly seized upon, without regard to the evidence on which it rests. Even for actions which the whole world has hitherto agreed to admire Niebuhr is always ready to find out some unworthy motive. And all is put forth with overbearing dogmatism, on the mere ipse dixit of Barthold Niebuhr. Wholly unlike this is the conduct of Mr. Grote. Even here his laborious honesty never fails him. Mr. Grote does not refuse, even to a Macedonian, the right, no less Macedonian than Athenian, of being heard before he is condemned. The evidence is, as ever with Mr. Grote, fully and fairly marshalled; the reader who has not gone through the original authorities for himself is put in a position to dissent, if he pleases, from the decision of the judge. Hardly ever does Mr. Grote fail to bring forward the passages which tell * Οὐ τῆς δεινότητος ὁ Καλλισθένης, ἀλλὰ τῆς δυσμενείας Μακεδόσιν ἀπόδειξιν dédoke. Plut. Alex. 53. most strongly against his own view. He believes much against Alexander which we hold that the evidence does not warrant but he never invents scandal or attributes motives after the manner of Niebuhr. * Niebuhr is simply incapable of understanding a hero; Mr. Grote merely fails to rise to the heroic point of fully appreciating an enemy. With Niebuhr, Alexander becomes a monster instead of a man ; with Mr. Grote he becomes at the worst a Barbarian instead of a Greek. In short, Niebuhr is, in this case, a mere reckless calumniator; Mr. Grote is simply one who, after weighing a mass of conflicting authorities, has come to a conclusion less favourable to Alexander of Macedon than we ourselves have come to after weighing the same authorities. Of the life of Alexander we have five consecutive narratives, besides numerous allusions and fragments scattered up and down various Greek and Latin writers. Of these last, the greatest in number and the most curious in detail are to be found in the strange miscellany of Athênaios; but the most really valuable are due to the judicious and accurate Strabo. Of our five writers, Arrian and Quintus Curtius have given us separate histories of the great conqueror. The work of Arrian has come down to us whole, with the exception of a single gap. In the work of Curtius there are several such gaps, and the whole of his two first books are wanting. Plutarch has devoted to Alexander one of his longest biographies; Diodôros bestows on him a whole book of his Universal History; Justin gives a shorter narrative in his abridgement of Trogus Pompeius. But we have again to regret a very considerable gap in the narrative of Diodôros, which however is partially supplied by the headings of the chapters being preserved. Here, it might be thought, are authorities enough; but unluckily, among all the five, there is not a single contemporary chronicler. All five write at secondhand; the earliest of * [Of these Lectures of Niebuhr's something more will be found in the next Essay.] |